Yet when 57 Lib Dem MPs gather in one room, strange things begin to happen to their judgement.

Even Nick Clegg is now seriously considering the mass abstention option — bravely leading his party to sit on the fence.

To be fair, there are no good options. They will be punished for breaking their pledge to vote against a rise. But it seems that after countless hours of excruciating debate, they’ve decided the best way to minimise the pain is to not vote at all. Read more

At that point the OBR had yet to take account of the new coalition policies. So for our piece, we had assumed Cameron would actually achieve his aim of bringing net immigration down to the level of the 1990s, when the average was close to 60,000.

For those of you who don’t think it sounds much, a five-year military settlement as generous as that was last granted in the early 1980s.

Is the rise a realistic basis for planning? A prudent approach? Should we really count on a military spending boom after 2015?

This review was, after all, supposed to balance the MoD books. Yet it looks like we’re back to buying kit on the never-never. Officials tell me the cumulative unfunded liability — if you take the usual planning assumption of the budget rising in line with inflation after 2015 — stands at £13bn to £15bn over the coming decade.

Coalition aides say this is completely different from the “black hole” they say they inherited from Labour. It all comes down to this statement given by the prime minister in the Commons:

“My own strong view is that this structure will require year on year real-terms growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015.”

On the basis of this “strong view”, Liam Fox’s team think it is realistic and reasonable to at least plan on the basis of real terms increases to cover their spending commitments. Defence chiefs also welcomed Cameron’s “strong view” of the future — but they are still pushing for a more “bankable” pledge. They want George Osborne to guarantee an annual uplift beyond 2015, a request that some Treasury officials will treat as light comedy. I don’t think such a guarantee has ever been given to a department. Read more

At an extraordinary hearing of the Treasury select committee today, an external member of the monetary policy committee spoke out over Mervyn’s “excessively political” statements on the pace of deficit reduction. In genteel Bank terms, this is an uprising. Read more

Howard Flight is the latest politician to make a bid for the “most inappropriate remark of the year” award. He’s up against some tough competition but this quote is quite something.

We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible.Read more

George Osborne will take credit in the City for the U-turn. But the bankers also have to thank Sir David Walker, the City grandee who originally proposed the measures, for concluding it would be “mistaken” for Britain to go it alone.

Walker’s revised view is largely consistent with his report, which did acknowledge the dangers of unilateral action. But Walker also made one conflicting point. This is the key passage:

The priority of persistence with efforts to achieve such [international] convergence needs no further underlining, but a situation may develop in which the adoption of an exemplary leadership stance by the UK in this respect is the most effective way of achieving progress.

There have already been some noises off between the UK government and the green energy industry over the green investment bank, the government’s proposed investment vehicle for funding clean energy projects. Apart from anything, many in the sector simply don’t think the £1bn promised by Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, is enough. Read more

So the Royal Wedding is to be on April 29. Congratulations to the couple. They’ve picked a date that effectively parks a golden landau in the path of the political horse race. It will come a few weeks after the cuts kick in, and a few days before an epochal referendum on electoral reform. Read more

David Cameron took the biggest delegation to India since the Raj in an attempt to revitalise relations. But, impressive as it was by UK standards, the trip has clearly not provided much of an aide-mémoire for Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister.

Cash bonuses? Uncle Vince says £2,500 is your limit. Board level bonuses? Banned outright. (Vince made a joke about how the bank directors can make do with free golf club membership.) Working at a loss making bank? No bonus at all.

There was more. The one measure that really stood out was transparency. Cable and Clegg wanted to require banks to publish the names of all staff on a pay and bonus package greater than the prime minister’s salary. This would not only have ensnared top traders — it probably would have included their PAs as well.

When we asked Clegg about this recently, he dismissed the question, saying the Walker review was being implemented. When we pointed out that the legislation had been delayed, he seemed a bit taken aback.

Now George Osborne wants to impose such transparency rules on high pay “internationally rather than unilaterally” — which is an all too transparent code for shelving the reforms. Sir David Walker, the City grandee who proposed the tighter disclosure rules, has given the chancellor some convenient cover.

What will Clegg do? This will be a fascinating test of Lib Dem resolve. Read more

“The Financial Times ran a report of what they thought was going to be in the white paper, fair play to them, journalists often anticipate events, but the truth is that we will be funding schools through local authorities as we do at the moment.”

Ministers can often make claims like this when stories are based on briefings from their aides and officials. Conversations are deniable. But the FT’s story was not only confirmed by the officials we spoke to. It was in a draft White Paper that we were reading back to the department. It was supported by conversations we’d had with people who had been briefed on the consequences of the changes. None of the factual elements of the piece were disputed by education officials in the week after publication.

Of course there are caveats in any such story. There was a consultation planned and a final decision was to be taken early next year. No journalist can discount the possibility that a minister will buckle at the first smell of grapeshot. But one thing is clear. Directly funding schools was Gove’s preferred model a fortnight ago, before he was overwhelmed with fierce complaints from councillors.

Just to put the record straight, we thought it might be worthwhile to publish some extra extracts of the White Paper.

A remarkable number of the new Conservative peers share a common past: knowing David Cameron when he was a young Tory apparatchik.

It is tempting to conclude the honours list is payback to some people who helped him rise to the top. But that is probably a bit unfair. It more reflects the fact that Cameron is the first Tory prime minister to rise from the party’s staff ranks. Read more

General election 2015

Countdown to May 7

About this blog

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The fragmentation of UK politics makes the 2015 general election the most unpredictable in living memory. Follow Jim Pickard, Kiran Stacey and the rest of the FT team for unique insights as the campaign gets underway.

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The authors

Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.

Recent Comments

Comment by BettyseniorUnfortunately people are living an illusion if they think that any alliance between mainstream parties and minority parties to gain power, will deliver them from evil so to say. For no matter what all …

Comment by SinbadAlways interested to hear these claims of all the money being bet on the Tories.Is it just one bookies in Safe-Tory-Seat-on-the -Wold? Doesn't seem to reflect what's on the bookies websites.

Comment by Ed BallsHow strange it is that the real money being bet on the election shows that the Conservatives will be the biggest party and this has not changed for some time.